What in the world?
I don’t know what to think about this story but it might be the weirdest tale I’ve heard in a long time. According to the Washington Post, the trove of classified documents that were recently discovered on the Discord social media platform were posted by a young man who works in a military facility for a bunch of teenagers for no discernible reason other than to show off for them. It’s truly bizarre.
Here’s a brief rundown by CNN.
The person behind a massive leak of classified US military documents worked on a military base and posted sensitive national security secrets in an online group of acquaintances, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
The Post reporting, which CNN could not independently verify, covers new ground in identifying the supposed leaker of highly classified documents – including some that paint a pessimistic US view of the war in Ukraine – and provides the first known details about who may be behind a major national security breach that has rocked Washington in recent days.
The leaker, described in the Post story as a lonely young man and gun enthusiast, was part of a chatroom of about two dozen people on Discord – a social media platform popular with video gamers – that shared a love of guns and military gear, The Post reported, citing an interview with the leaker’s friend who was also part of the group.
The friend told the Post he would not reveal the identity of the alleged leaker or their location to authorities.
The leaker, going by the moniker “OG,” began posting messages to the Discord chatroom last year that referenced military jargon, The Post reported. In the months that followed, the leaker posted messages in which he appeared to transcribe classified information from US documents, according to the report.
“They were, he recalled, what appeared to be near-verbatim transcripts of classified intelligence documents that OG indicated he had brought home from his job on a ‘military base,’ which the member declined to identify,” the Post reported, referring to messages posted by the anonymous user.
“OG claimed he spent at least some of his day inside a secure facility that prohibited cellphones and other electronic devices, which could be used to document the secret information housed on government computer networks or spooling out from printers,” according to the Post.
The report went on to describe the Discord server apparently controlled by “OG,” where recently leaked classified documents were posted, as a “pandemic refuge, particularly for teen gamers locked in their houses and cut off from their real-world friends.”
A Discord spokesperson told CNN on Sunday that the company is cooperating with law enforcement on the investigation but declined further comment. CNN has reached out to Discord following The Washington Post reporting.
“He wanted to ‘keep us in the loop,’” the group member told the Post. And “OG” “seemed to think that his insider knowledge would offer the others protection from the troubled world around them,” according to the Post report.
“If you could think it, it was in those documents,” the friend and member of OG’s Discord group told the Post.
The Discord chatroom, or “server,” disappeared from online after news of the leaks broke last week, according to a CNN review of Discord servers. Some of the documents were subsequently posted by Discord users to another invitation-only server. Some Discord users thought the documents were fake because they didn’t think anyone would be brazen enough to post them online, according to a CNN review of messages on the platform.
Bellingcat, an investigative outlet, first reported on the connection between the leaked documents and the two Discord servers.
WTH???
Somehow he managed to transcribe some of the documents and then photograph some others. The teenager who spoke with the Post hasn’t been approached by the FBI, which is also very curious. He and another member of the group are refusing to give the man’s name but if this story is true then I would expect we will see an arrest very soon.
The Post also reported:
In a video seen by The Post, the man who the member said is OG stands at a shooting range, wearing safety glasses and ear coverings and holding a large rifle. He yells a series of racial and antisemitic slurs into the camera, then fires several rounds at a target.
The teenager explains to the Post that the government is bad and the only reason it would keep intelligence like this a secret is because they have something to hide.
Okayyyy.
Stay tuned. There’s got to be more to this story.
Update: Bellingcat had some other details on this story. This was interesting:
This server was not especially geopolitical in nature, although its users had a staunchly conservative stance on several issues, members told Bellingcat. Racial slurs and racist memes were shared widely.
Update II:
What???:
The leader of a small online gaming chat group where a trove of classified U.S. intelligence documents leaked over the last few months is a 21-year-old member of the intelligence wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The national guardsman, whose name is Jack Teixeira, oversaw a private online group named Thug Shaker Central, where about 20 to 30 people, mostly young men and teenagers, came together over a shared love of guns, racist online memes and video games.
Two U.S. officials confirmed that investigators want to talk to Airman Teixeira about the leak of the government documents to the private online group. One official said Airman Teixeira might have information relevant to the investigation.
Federal investigators have been searching for days for the person who leaked the top secret documents online but have not identified Airman Teixeira or anyone else as a suspect. The F.B.I. declined to comment…
The Times has been able to link Airman Teixeira to other members of the Thug Shaker Central group through his online gaming profile and other records. Details of the interior of Airman Teixeira’s childhood home — posted on social media in family photographs — also match details on the margins of some of the photographs of the leaked secret documents.
The Times also has established, through social media posts and military records, that Airman Teixeira is enlisted in the 102nd Intelligence Wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard. Posts on the unit’s official Facebook page congratulated Airman Teixeira and colleagues for being promoted to Airman First Class in July 2022…
It was not immediately clear if a young Air National Guardsman in his position could have had access to such highly sensitive briefings. Officials within the U.S. government with security clearance often receive such documents through daily emails, one official told The Times, and those emails might then be automatically forwarded to other people.
Airman Teixeira’s mother, Dawn, speaking outside her home in Massachusetts on Thursday, confirmed that her son was a member of the Air National Guard and said he had recently been working overnight shifts at a base on Cape Cod. In the last few days, he had changed his phone number, she said.
A 21 year old, right wing National Guardsman has access to top secret documents? Really?